


The Possible Lives of Jyn Erso

by RapidashPatronus



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Diary/Journal, Essays, Gen, I love writing as Mon Motha, Who needs one word when eighteen verbose alternatives will perform a similar function, my sesquipedalian queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 16:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16141010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RapidashPatronus/pseuds/RapidashPatronus
Summary: Written for the Jyn Appreciation Squad





	The Possible Lives of Jyn Erso

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Jyn Appreciation Squad

_ \----- Excerpted from the journals of Mon Mothma ----- _

So many are the remarkable small victories and sad losses of our struggle for the New Republic that it seems rarely a day passes that does not commemorate some turning point or other in our fortunes, and while a very few days from now many will be marking one of our more major milestones, the destruction of the original Death Star at the Battle of Yavin, today marks 20 standard years since one of the tributary moments that made it possible: the Battle of Scarif.

Few among our number had my good fortune in knowing or meeting any of that handful of courageous individuals who adopted the callsign “Rogue One”, though their names are known by many; even to those to whom the battle of Scarif is not within living memory, the name of Jyn Erso at the very least is recognisable, associated with courage and conviction.

I have indulged myself before, albeit briefly, in speculating on what manner of woman she might have become, had her sacrifice, and that of all those lost that day, been avoidable.

For all my politician’s diplomacy and pragmatism, if I have a deep fault, it is perhaps that of mawkish sentimentality. Consequently I have found that my thoughts over the years have turned frequently to the young woman we rescued from Wobani in our pursuit of victory - though I often wonder if abduction is a more appropriate word than rescue, given her initial reluctance to assist the cause.

Perhaps these thoughts arise because I saw in her a trace of what I, with less restraint, might myself have been - or even, with more courage, might have wished to have been. They are thoughts that I have set aside as quickly as I can, for such aimless hypotheticals serve little purpose in the tactical chambers of war. Now though, as I find myself in a state of health that renders me no longer of any great assistance to a cause that is by any means largely won, practicality is no longer sufficient fuel to divert me from this path of speculation. So it is that I grant myself a moment to consider here - begging the forbearance of any reader who might one day decrypt these journals and hope to read something of more substance than the indulgent conjecture of an ailing former diplomat - the possible lives of Sergeant Jyn Erso.

That she would have been a guide to us in her passion and determination is in no doubt, and with support from those with whom she had bonded most closely, her skills of leadership would have grown beyond the personal awkwardness and brittle defences that hampered her nature. Of this potential I have written before.

But of the woman she might have been in entirely different circumstances I have not previously dedicated room in my journal, although the thoughts have hovered often on the edge of my mind.

Her motivations in leading the strike on Scarif were doubtless grounded in a deep belief in her father. It spoke of fierce loyalty, which in a kinder galaxy might have been softened into gentleness. I have precious little insight into her relationships with the others on her crew, but their willingness after so short a time to follow her without question on a seemingly doomed mission is telling. That one of our own most highly respected officers, indeed, should gather a team on her behalf, spoke volumes of her capacity to inspire faith and loyalty herself. His loyalties being overridingly to the Rebellion, Captain Andor was, for all his virtues, not given to personal attachment - though I suspect more by duty than by nature - yet something in Erso’s character turned him against orders in a manner that I have wished many times that circumstance had permitted me also to do, and gave him a clarity of thinking that distinguished instruction from intuition, freeing him to act instead upon his own evaluation.

What might this spark of leadership otherwise have been, in another time? I hesitate to glorify her, to set her upon an unnecessary pedestal, though it is so easy so to do with war heroes. To say that her sense of justice was unmuddied, her libertine spirit undangerous, would be to deny her the faults in her character that, as with us all, made her who she was. There was much talk of selflessness in her actions on that day, which I am hesitant to echo, having met the woman in person. Her brittle independence formed an ineffective mask for a deep wish for connection, held back by a fear of betrayal; I believe therefore that she was driven in no small part by an inner desperation to prove to herself that her father had not forsaken her in the way that she had once believed.

This fire of determination, coupled with burning outrage and indignation, could have made her a dangerous adversary indeed. Untouched by the political scepticism that led her to a life of petty crime and false identities as far from the impacts of war as she could get, she might have been as violent and unsteadying a force to our Rebellion as her foster father Saw Guerrera came to be. I thank the Force that there was within her a deep compassion that held her back from this precipice.

It is this compassion which at times has led me to think that she might have been skilled as a medic. She is known to have been intellectually advanced, a talented codebreaker, and with the application of this ability to the study of medical science she could have achieved much. I question, however, whether she had the inner stability to cope with the losses and failures that must attend the career of even the most accomplished sentient medic.

It is tempting to believe that, given how easily she inspired others, she might have been a recruiter for our cause. I think, however, that she was unaware of her effect on others, and it would have unimpressed to have that quality turned to political aims had she ever been convinced of its existence. I carry with me a great guilt that there are times when I am grateful that she gave her life on Scarif, for a life as a mascot and a feted hero would have been one to which her drive and temper were ill-suited. Perhaps it was exactly her own oblivion to her effect on others that made her so luminous, unsullied as she was by any purpose other than her own, a purpose which we are blessed to have had align with our own for a time.

Perhaps in a galaxy free of war, she might have followed one of her parents in their paths. I suspect she would have been given more to her father’s talent for engineering than to her mother’s geological prowess, though I fancy she would have lacked the mental rigour and discipline to see her creations past their initial faulty prototypes. Perhaps I am unkind in thinking so, however. We are all, after all, faulty prototypes ourselves, shaped by the circumstances that befall us, and if Jyn Erso was impetuous and unmethodical, it is most likely a life of war and abandonment that made her so.

However romantic my notions might be, it is hard to imagine her settled and homely, sharing her life with a community of friends, family, and neighbours. I suspect that the crew of Rogue One were the closest she might have come in many years to such a unit. I am guilty, as I have said, of perhaps projecting too much of myself onto her, but I believe that she would have felt the same way, had she had time to dwell on the notion - that while such a life might be desirable, it would not satisfy or comfort the woman she had become. I try to picture her as the woman she might otherwise have been, but still a vision of comfortable home life eludes me. This grieves me. It is the same when I try to picture myself in such a life; I do not know what shape that life would take.

Perhaps it is also projection, then, a self-justification of sorts, that I surmise that Jyn Erso lived the life to which she was best fitted, and fulfilled the purpose to which she was most suited. Hypotheticals aside, of who she might have been and what she might have become, the stubborn, frightened young captive who changed the fate of our galaxy was an inseparable mix of those traits to which she was born and those which were moulded by the events and players of her life. All we can say for certain is that she gave her life in fighting for a cause that she chose to believe in, which I believe is a better way to die than she had ever allowed herself to expect.

My only regret is that we do not know the circumstances of her passing. Did she know of their mission’s success? Did she send the transmission herself, or had she already been cut down when someone threw the switch? Was she with others of her crew when she died? I pray that she was not alone, that she had hope until the last.

I pray the same for myself.


End file.
